Interests: Finds joy in language, ideas and content, great food and wine, plus living in Sonoma.

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What a wonderful story, Frances. Thank you so much for sharing your experience in the Museum, as well as the stories and memories about your grandfather.
Gallagher & Associates was responsible for the exhibit design, and they are one of our clients. Here's a link to the project on their website — https://gallagherdesign.com/projects/the-national-world-war-ii-museum/
You'll see a number of other historical museums in their portfolio, and in addition, they are currently involved with the new National Medal of Honor Museum in South Carolina, working with world-famous Safdie Architects.
Best,
Marjanne

My first visit to New Orleans was loosely planned as a three-night, four-day, past faced city-break of one of my bucket-list U.S. destinations. I would listen to the world's best jazz, eat great southern food, explore the French Quarter and the Garden District by foot, tiptoe around the abov...

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, my mother and I rode on jitneys like the one pictured. They ran along Mission Street with a route from downtown San Francisco to "top of the hill" in Daly City. My recollection is that they were much faster than a bus and less expensive, too. And unlike the buses, everyone had a seat.
Link to video of Matthew's Top of the Hill Daly City —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsPTgYMjNcs

This week, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) will consider approving a new permit program for private transit vehicles, or PTVs. These vehicles – currently, Chariot is the only one operating in the city – use shuttle vans and a smartphone app; they are “open to the public, charg...

Re strategy& — Booz & Company has long had a really excellent publication called strategy+business, as well as the domain www.strategy-business.com. I just checked, and both are still working, with a new masthead (strategy&) saying, "strategy+business is published by PwC Strategy& Inc." This makes their use of an ampersand even more interesting, since they already had a respected identity for strategy+. (It also shows an unresolved style issue regarding capital letters.)
You might also be interested in Wert & Company — www.wertco.com — an international executive search firm that uses the ampersand as a design element as well as visual reinforcement for what they do — connecting people. Each page of their website has an ampersand in a different typeface (with a library of options that change with each click), and their Twitter avatar has a really gorgeous one. I have been quite envious ever since they unveiled the new site.

The punctuation symbol for “and” has been showing up in some interesting places lately. & Sons, by David Gilbert. Cover art for paperback edition (published May 2014). Amazon gives the title as And Sons. James Wood begins his New Yorker review of Gilbert’s novel with this comment on the un...

I think that Vision, Beliefs, and Culture are evolutionary, driving growth and development of an organization. Products and Services need to be a direct outcome of the evolutionary forces, but are informed by external forces (markets and clients) as well as business drivers. Where is Strategy in this diagram?

I quickly put this together on a flight from Austin to Chicago. Sure I could write a short post about it, but I'm curious—what's your intepretation? Use the comment sections below to write the post for me.

Many of these customs come from older marriage ceremonies. For instance, I attended the wedding of a Hindu couple, and the officiant was a Pundit who spoke in Sanskrit and translated into English. the wedding couple's hands were also tied together with rope, and then the couple circled the wedding bower. The Pundit commented on the ancient custom of "tying the knot."

Handfasting: A ritual in which the hands of both marriage partners are tied together to symbolize their connection to each other. From Middle English hondfesten, "to betroth." Originally Old Norse handfesta, "to strike a bargain; to pledge." From hond = hand and festa = to fasten, fix, or affirm...

...but still a great honor. Fritinancy has been voted... ...in Lexiophiles' annual competition. Thanks to everyone who spread the word and voted! I'm especially honored to be in such distinguished company. The justifiably top-ranked blog is Separated by a Common Language, written by an Amer...

First of all, I loved this article. Haven't had to think about different shirt names in years. I suspect that we categorize button-front "men's style" shirts (dress shirts, guayaberas, aloha shirts) differently from knit shirts (t-shirts, polo shirts, turtlenecks).
In Australia, turtlenecks are "polos," cardigan sweaters are "jumpers," pullovers are "pullovers," sweatshirt tops are "sweaters," and undershirts are "skivvies." Oh — athletic shoes are "trainers," and swimsuits are "bathers."

Your assignment: describe this tailored shirt for women. Source: Corporette blog.* Me, I'd call it a tailored shirt with buttoning cuffs, or perhaps a button-front shirt. But at some point in recent history, women's-fashion copywriters started calling it a button-down shirt. See here, here, ...

Thanks for this post. I heard Dr. Kessler on NPR, and his theory rings true for me.
Re stimulus/i, I would have rephrased: "They [fat, sugar, salt] are very stimulating, and they become the most salient stimuli."

Hyperpalatable: Loaded with fat, sugar, and salt so as to be irresistibly appealing. Hyperpalatable foods are a suspected culprit in overeating and the obesity epidemic. Coined from the prefix hyper-, "excessive" or "beyond"; and palatable, "pleasing to the sense of taste." Also spelled hyper-pa...

An Independence Day appreciation: Window #1, Issues magazine shop, Oakland (my favorite neighborhood store) Terrible photo; glorious tapestry of titles. Of course they all have websites, but it's so much more enthralling to gaze at all their covers this way. Some of my favorites: Yalda...

As an active tweeter, I was confused by the initial report. I'm glad to learn that apps like TweetDeck and Tweetie won't be affected, and neither will those of us who tweet regularly. I really appreciate your thorough explanation, especially the advice regarding domains. And thanks to Bob Cumbow, too, for his reminder that "trademark" is a noun.

TechCrunch reported this morning about an email conversation between Twitter and a third-party developer that had created a service very similar to Twitter's. One phrase raised TC's eyebrows—and mine: Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) [...] I wasn't t...

Like Nick, my first thought was WOW! So that's what I looked up, and I am even more wowed! I always considered Erin McKean to be amazing, but Wordnik is truly exceptional. Thank you so much for letting us all know about it, plus giving us some of the inside scoop.

Lexicographer: One who writes, compiles, or edits a dictionary. From the Greek words meaning words and write. That's my not-very-subtle way of introducing you to Wordnik, the free online dictionary that makes its public debut today. Actually, "dictionary" doesn't do justice to this mammoth proje...

Thank you for three years of witty observation and commentary. I'm delighted to say that I've been reading your blog for almost the entire time, and I am definitely looking forward to many more years of your blog (and Tweets, too).

Yep, it was three years ago today—June 8, 2006—that I published the first post on this blog, which was then called Away With Words. Later that day I published the first real post (the first one was just an introduction). It was titled "Name That Cage," and you can read it here. (It looks like t...

I thought one solid week of Bad Brand Names would suffice for a while, but no: it's raining bad names. Please allow me to be your umbrella. Smub is a new technology company with offices in Lyon, France, and Redwood City, California. Its principals are all French, and perhaps to their ears the ...

President Obama and the First Lady never cease to amaze me with their intelligence, sophistication, and wit. I'm sure that there are some writers in the West Wing who are providing the words, but they couldn't do it for just anyone....

Along with many people, I was stunned when Arizona* State University invited President Obama to deliver their commencement address—and then refused to present him with an honorary degree because they felt that he hadn't yet made "significant contributions to education and society over the course...

Great post, Nancy. Not only do you find the most interesting examples, but your analysis is always spot-on.
I agree with Tanita: Although my eyes saw "infegy," my brain read "effigy." (But then, I am just slightly dyslexic.)

I'll say this about Infegy: the language of its website is readable. Most of the punctuation is correct. (We'll ignore the over-capitalization problem for now.) Much of the writing is clear, compelling, even graceful. The name? Not so much. The opposite, in fact. Here's the official story (emp...

Time for another theme week at Fritinancy! This time we cross over to the dark side for an unflinching analysis of some bad examples of brand naming. Five days, five bad names! Who knows: I may even throw in a bonus malonym. It's not as if there's a shortage. For our first Bad Name, may I hear a...